Xfce is very slow, part 2

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 2014-01-14 at 18:34 +0100, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> 2014/1/14 Hartmut Haase <hha4491 at web.de>:
> > Hi,
> > one thing I wanted to mention, too: I'm using 8 desktops with 4 programs
> > running always: Terminal, Opera, Thunar, Thunderbird, and in the panel the
> > weather-plugin.
> >
> The question that I'm very much interested in, and I'm not sure if you answered:
> - Do you have the exact same slowness with another DE (say, Fluxbox or LXDE)?
> - Do you have the exact same slowness on a "cold boot", after halting
> and then restarting the computer (i.e. _before_ you run Opera, etc.)?
> - Do you notice at any time a 'kworker' process spiking in top?

The culprit already is found, by a command I posted and now I likely
will unsubscribe. But feel free to continue an idiotic kind of
troubleshooting or consider to take a look at the SMART attribute #1.

"(Vendor specific raw value.) Stores data related to the rate of
hardware read errors that occurred when reading data from a disk
surface. The raw value has different structure for different vendors and
is often not meaningful as a decimal number." -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

Feel also free to believe that the amount of raw values Hartmut gets is
irrelevant.

Take a look at Hartmut's output for #7.

"(Vendor specific raw value.) Rate of seek errors of the magnetic heads.
If there is a partial failure in the mechanical positioning system, then
seek errors will arise. Such a failure may be due to numerous factors,
such as damage to a servo, or thermal widening of the hard disk. The raw
value has different structure for different vendors and is often not
meaningful as a decimal number."

I suspect the drive is broken and even replacing the cable wont solve
the issue.
Your opinion might vary.